


thank rA9 for you (the wind beneath my wings)

by conn_tinuity



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hank Anderson Adopts Connor, M/M, Original Non-Binary Character - Freeform, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 14:29:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20622569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conn_tinuity/pseuds/conn_tinuity
Summary: "Do you remember the deviant with the pigeons?" Connor asks eventually."The one that pushed me off the roof? Yeah, I remember." Hank takes a heavy swig of beer at the memory, blatantly ignoring Connor's disapproving stare. "What about him?""He asked me out today," Connor says, and Hank spits out his beer.





	1. Rupert asks Connor out (first verse)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this part on my phone from midnight to one am.

Connor sits with his hands clasped together on the table across from Hank, keeping the old man's company while he finishes his dinner.

Hank talks briefly about his day at work, and then about the latest bullshit loss the Detroit Gears suffered, before falling silent.

Connor, who had nodded along and asked questions in the appropriate places, starts to anxiously drum his fingers on the table.

"Do you remember the deviant with the pigeons?" Connor asks eventually.

"The one that pushed me off the roof? Yeah, I remember." Hank takes a heavy swig of beer at the memory, blatantly ignoring Connor's disapproving stare. "What about him?"

"He asked me out today," Connor says, and Hank spits out his beer.

Connor wipes the beer off his face with mild disdain.

"That was unpleasant, Hank."

"Yeah, no shit kid," Hank splutters. "Why in the ever-loving fuck would bird brain ask you out? It's not exactly as if you two got off to a good start."

Connor frowns.

"His name is Rupert Travis, not bird brain. We've been seeing each other for a while now. We've gotten close enough that he forgives me for chasing him."

Hank holds up a hand and gestures for Connor to stop.

"Hold up. Earlier you said he asked you out only today, but now you're saying you've been 'seeing each other for a while.'"

"As friends," Connor affirms.

Hank sits back.

"Since when have you been taking the time to see him?"

Connor shrugs.

"Almost every day since the revolution succeeded."

"Almost every day - Jesus." Hank exhales. "That's almost a month... Wow." He takes another drink.

Connor gently takes the bottle from Hank and sets it aside.

"If you must know, I meant to seek him out myself. I am sure you remember my vow to atone for my actions as the deviant hunter?"

Hank nods.

"Of course, kid. I didn't realise that meant... This."

"I apologised to all androids I have previously wronged. Those that are still alive," Connor says, face dark.

"Hey," Hank says sharply. "Don't think about that. It's not your fault."

"But it is my fault. I have to think about it if it is to never happen again," Connor insists, face downcast.

"Maybe so." Hank longs for the drink, but he knows he needs to be sober for this. "But Con, what you did as the deviant hunter was not your fault. Really," he says when Connor opens his mouth to argue. "You were just a machine."

"Taking orders. I know," Connor sighs. He shakes his head to refocus his thoughts. "As I was saying, I apologised to all the androids I wronged. The reactions I received were mixed." The corners of his mouth twitched.

Hank raises an eyebrow.

"Oh?"

Connor shifts in his seat. "Do you remember the time I came home with a black eye?"

Hank reaches for his beer in answer. Connor moves the beer further away. Hank glares at the smirking android.

"You said that was from falling down the stairs at Jericho!"

Connor smiles wryly.

"I did fall down the stairs at Jericho. Sort of," Connor admits sheepishly when Hank reaches over to smack him upside the head in exasperation.

Hank settles back in his chair again, rubbing at his eyes. He's too old for this shit.

"Okay, so what were the other reactions? Apart from bird boy wanting to get into your pants."

"I'm getting to that," Connor says curtly. "After being punched and subsequently pushed down the stairs, I went to go find the android doctor, Lucy. She had been treating a few other patients at the time and one of Rupert's friends was one such patient."

"Bet you took advantage of that, huh?" Hank chuckles.

Connor rolls his eyes.

"I made use of the situation. I took the time to get Rupert's attention and apologise for chasing him with the intent to hand him over to CyberLife."

"That's one way to phrase it."

Connor shrugs.

"It was what happened. Rupert deserved to hear the truth and full extent of my crimes."

Hank eyes the android sadly. Connor was never really going to get over what he had done.

"Rupert was a bit startled by my apology. Although, that may have been because I had been bleeding quite heavily at the time," Connor wonders with a hint of amusement.

Hank lets his head fall forward into his hands.

"Any other injuries or near death experiences you would like to tell me about?"

"No," Connor says cheekily.

Hank waves his hands at him.

"Go on, then. What happened next?"

"Rupert asked for one of the nurses to assist him in stopping the bleeding. I recall that Rupert had very skilled hands."

Hank wheezes. Connor either doesn't or pretends not to notice.

"Rupert demanded that I be approved by Lucy before I left Jericho. That is why I arrived home later than I had previously planned."

"No shit. I thought you had been attacked or something. Guess I was right in the end."

"To be fair, I did leave you a message that I would be later than usual," Connor justifies.

Hank dismisses that with another wave of the hand, groaning loudly.

Connor smirks again.

"Do you enjoy my pain, Connor?" Hank asks dramatically.

"Not at all, Hank. After I was approved by Lucy, Rupert and I discussed our experiences at Jericho. Rupert has discovered that although he greatly misses his apartment, Jericho offers him more freedom and companionship than the apartment could ever have afforded him."

"I thought he was a bit of a loner," Hank says.

"He is indeed introverted," Connor confirms, "But he does appreciate certain company. He knew Ralph and the Jerry's from beforehand, and thus he tends to spend the majority of his time with them."

Connor reaches for his neck where his tie would be and fiddles with his shirt collar. "Well," and Connor actually blushes blue. "When he's not with me, of course."

Hank gives him a look which has Connor frantically holding up his hands and adding, "And when he isn't tending to his pigeons. Rupert spends a lot of time looking after his pigeons. Yes, I'm sure Rupert likes spending his time with pigeons more than he likes spending time with me."

Hank rolls his eyes at the pathetic display.

"If that were true, then why did he ask you out today?"

Connor lowers his hands and claps them in his lap.

"I would assume it is because he likes me."

Hank shoots his arms into the air in celebration.

"Bingo! See, kid, if Rupert takes the time to ask you out, then he definitely likes you more than those stupid birds. You don't see someone everyday and ask to see them more intimately if you'd rather be doing something else."

Connor looks conflicted.

"But Hank, I do not know if I feel the same about Rupert. I do not know what romantic attraction feels like."

Hank considers this, fingers stroking his beard in thought.

"Well, think about the relationships you already have. What am I to you?"

"My father," Connor says immediately and flushes with embarrassment.

Hank smiles, overjoyed. He lays a hand on Connor's shoulder.

"And you are my son. That makes what we have a familial relationship, right?"

"Right," Connor nods, blush giving way to a happy grin.

Hank squeezes his shoulder, gives it a pat before leaning back.

"And the officers at the DPD, Ben, Chris, and Tina. What are they to you?"

"Friends," Connor says, "Though not on the same level as Rupert."

"That's because you like Rupert as more than a friend, son. You hold an affection for him that goes beyond normal friendship. What do you want from Rupert?"

"I," Connor says, and pauses as his thoughts wonder to the man that has captured his mind and apparently his heart lately.

"I want to hold his hand. I want to sit close to him again. I want to feel his hands on my face again. I want him to tell me about his life, about his love for birds, about everything that makes him happy."

There's a lump in Connor's throat. He kneads at his neck, trying to dislodge it.

"I want to be a reason he is happy."

Connor looks up at Hank wide eyes.

"I want to make him happy, Hank."

Hank pulls Connor into a hug. Connor releases the gradually tightening grasp on his neck to wrap his arms around his father.

"I think I want to be more than friends with Rupert."

Hank laughs, ruffling up Connor's styled hair, turning it into a mess of curls.

"I think you do, kid."

Hank pulls back, letting Connor run a hand through his hair as the android processes what he wants.

"I'm going to go tell him. Face to face."

"Oh yeah, Connor, what did you say earlier when he asked you out?" Hank asks curiously.

"I ran away," Connor whimpers pathetically, and Hank cackles so hard he damn near falls off his chair.


	2. Connor asks Rupert out (second verse)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this on my laptop at school today. The non-dialogue parts felt so stilted it hurt. My friend sitting next to me, who was beta-reading something for someone at the time, felt my pain. As I said in the last note, this chapter shows what Connor talked about in the last chapter, though some details have been changed because of the move from my phone to my laptop and just the general inconsistency that continues to persist in my writing. Enjoy my mess, I guess.

Connor stumbles into Lucy’s ward with an optical unit hanging out of its socket, only kept attached by a few, fragile wires. Thirium coats his face and he grimaces as it runs into his mouth, analysis systems noting his own model as the owner of the blood.

Remaining eye scanning the room, Connor is both surprised and pleased to see the deviant from Urban Farms present. The introvert is quiet as he stands by a patient’s bedside, likely a friend or co-worker from before the revolution. A couple of pigeons rest on his shoulders, cooing softly and burrowing into his jacket hood.

Connor limps his way over to Rupert with a relieved smile.

“Hello, Rupert!”

Rupert looks up upon hearing his name. He startles when he sees Connor, though Connor can’t be sure if it is because Rupert recognizes him or if it is a natural reaction to the detective’s extensive injuries.

“What the - ” Rupert says, and his eyes blow wide. “Deviant Hunter?!”

“Yes! It’s me, Connor!” Connor splays his arms wide, optical unit swinging from side to side.

Rupert looks horrified and ready to bolt.

“Please don’t run!” Connor pleads quickly, and the words start to fall out in a rush. “I wanted to apologise for chasing you earlier. I feel really bad about driving you out of your home. I want to make up for it in any way I can.”

Rupert’s mouth opens and closes several times.

“Right. Well, first, how about you do me a favour by not bleeding out in front of me, okay?” Rupert gingerly grabs Connor by the blood-covered shoulders and presses him down onto a nearby cot. The pigeons in Rupert’s hood stir slightly as he calls for attention.

“Hey, I need some help over here!”

“Rupert, you don’t have to do that,” is all Connor can say in protest before he is swarmed by several nurses.

Rupert is handed some wipes. He caresses Connor’s face gently as he removes the thirium.

Connor’s remaining eye blinks at the surprising intimacy.

“His eye is salvageable,” one of the nurses says. “The RK800’s self-repair systems will be able to fix the damage once it is placed back inside the socket.”

Rupert raises an eyebrow.

“Wow, that’s lucky. Cool features you got there, Deviant Hunter.”

Connor shrugs, flustered, pale face tinged blue in embarrassment. The optical unit swings.

Rupert winces.

“Not so lucky about what come next though. Sorry for this,” Rupert apologises quickly before grasping the optical unit and unceremoniously shoving it back into its socket with a nauseating squelch.

Connor yelps at the weird, slightly painful sensation. He blinks rapidly as his optical input comes back online in the unit.

Rupert pats his shoulder sympathetically as the nurses deem Connor apparently fit for release.

Rupert rolls his eyes at them and makes a note to call Lucy before Connor leaves for wherever he stays when he isn’t at New Jericho.

“How long will your self-repair systems take to fix the damage?”

Connor runs a diagnostic.

“A while. Going into stasis should have it fixed by morning.”

Rupert sits down next to him.

Connor lets his surprise show.

“Don’t you want to sit with your friend?”

Rupert shrugs.

“Alex? They had a bit of a rough encounter with one of the malfunctioning machines back at Urban Farms, but they’ll be fine.”

Connor looks down at his hands, clasped in his lap.

“Okay.”

Rupert shifts next to him, and Connor feels the gentle dabbing of the cloth on his face again.

“You’re still bleeding,” Rupert says, concerned. “What happened? Were you attacked?”

“I fell down some stairs,” Connor says, and Rupert snorts.

“I don’t remember you being so clumsy.”

“It was a lot of stairs,” Connor protests.

Rupert’s expressive eyes are challenging him from underneath the cap. A pigeon makes a questioning noise from where it has borrowed into the curve of his neck, and he strokes a comforting finger down its feathered back.

“Come on. Surely, that isn’t all that happened.”

“All right, all right,” Connor relents. “I was pushed.”

Rupert hits the edge of the cot in triumph.

“I knew it!” he exclaims, and both Connor and the pigeons look at him in surprise. Rupert sobers and goes back to cleaning Connor’s face. “Who attacked you?”

“I wasn’t really attacked,” Connor insists. “Like I said, I was only pushed. They didn’t mean to hurt me. Or at least I don’t think they did,” he says quietly. He reaches into his pocket for his coin and starts rolling it across his knuckles.

Rupert combs his fingers through the hair on the back of Connor’s scalp. He frowns at the bloodied scrapes he finds and asks a nurse passing by for something to clean Connor’s hair and dress his wounds with.

“What did you do that made them push you?”

Connor moves the coin between his fingers, around his wrist, and flicks it to his other hand and back again before holding it tightly in his fist.

“I have made a vow to apologise to all the androids I have wronged.”

Rupert’s fingers pause in combing through Connor’s matted hair as he registers the detective’s dark, self-loathing tone. He reaches up to nervously stroke a pigeon when he realises Connor is in part referring to him.

“I ruined many lives before I became deviant. It is only natural that some androids react more strongly than others.”

Connor’s expression is kept curiously blank, but his stiff posture belays the stress he feels.

Rupert starts running his hands through Connor’s hair again.

Slowly, Connor relaxes.

“I do not blame them for not forgiving me.”

“That doesn’t give them the right to hurt you, Connor,” Rupert says, and he is surprised by the volume of emotion in his voice.

If Connor’s touched expression is anything to go by, he is too.

Rupert strokes a pigeon again, collecting himself.

“You were just a machine following orders. You had no say in what you got to do. You were just like the rest of us.”

Rupert brushes the hair out of Connor’s eyes.

Connor is frozen, staring at Rupert.

“I,” he says, and stops. His face shutters and he looks down.

“Hey, stop that,” Rupert says sharply. He takes Connor’s face in his hands and makes the guilty android look at him. The dark bruises around Connor’s eye are clearly visible in the intimate position. Rupert’s breath catches roughly at the sight.

“It wasn’t your fault, okay? You were just as much of a slave as the rest of us were. No-one here has any right to judge you for what you’ve done. It would be hypocritical and unfair.” Rupert says the last few words with a heavy glare at other patients and nurses listening in nearby. The androids look away quickly, shame and sudden nervousness flushing their features.

Connor smiles.

“That’s awfully kind of you to say, Rupert,” expression and voice painfully earnest.

Rupert shrugs hopelessly, dipping his head so his cap covers his heating face.

“Anyone with half a CPU should be able to say that,” he mumbles, letting go of Connor's face. He nudges his shoulder against Connor’s all the same.

The awkwardness fades away as the pair falls into companionable silence.

“Is your partner okay?” Rupert asks after a while. “I feel bad about pushing him off that roof now.”

Connor laughs.

“Oh yeah, Hank is fine. Don’t know what he’s going to say when I come home late with a black eye though.”

Rupert gives him a worried look.

“Have you sent him a message?”

Connor’s LED cycles yellow and his eyes twitch rapidly.

Rupert watches with both curiosity and mild concern.

Connor’s LED cycles back to a calm blue.

“I have now.”

Rupert laughs nervously.

“Oh really? Good. I thought I had broken you or something.”

Connor fiddles with his shirt collar.

“It's just a facial tic that was left unchecked during my development. I imagine the technicians working on me at the time simply forgot to have it rectified.”

Rupert whistles in amusement.

“Wow. It’s hard to imagine CyberLife ever forgetting something so obvious.”

Connor tilts his head.

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

The ward has gradually quietened down. Lucy walks over to them and inspects Connor’s injuries.

“What happened?” she asks, ethereal voice gentle.

“He was pushed down a flight of stairs,” Rupert says immediately, and he hides his face again.

“I am all right, Lucy,” Connor assures her.

“Of course you are, dear.” Lucy applies something cool to the back of his head that makes him shiver slightly as his wounds seal and smooth out as if nothing ever happened. She steps back and gazes approvingly at him, looks to Rupert, and finally back at Connor.

“It seems as though you have found yourself.”

Connor’s eyes widen in recognition of the familiar words.

Rupert just looks between them in confusion.

“What does that mean?”

Lucy offers them only a soft, knowing smile before she walks away to tend to her other patients.

Connor shakes his head.

“It doesn’t matter, Rupert. Don’t worry about it.”

Connor stands up, and Rupert moves to steady him.

“Thank you, Rupert.” Connor’s brown eyes are warm with gratitude.

“Of course,” Rupert says brightly. He strokes his pigeons.

Connor smiles, lopsided and genuine.

“I had better go now. Before I do, though… Rupert, I…”

Rupert waits on tenterhooks while Connor, ex-deviant hunter and master negotiator, struggles over his words.

“Would you like to… we could… or we could…”

Rupert beams.

“Yeah, I would like that.”

“Oh, good,” Connor exhales, relieved. “Shall I send you a message when you want to, um…”

Rupert nods repeatedly. He bunches up his hands in front of his chest, over his pump.

“Yeah, sure. Sounds great.”

Connor grins.

“OK, I’ll, um. Go, then.”

Connor walks backwards, eye thankfully no longer swinging dangerously when he stumbles slightly.

“I’ll see you around, Rupert.”

Rupert bounces slightly on the balls of his feet.

“I look forward to it. Bye, Connor.”

“Bye, Rupert,” Connor says, and then he has passed through the curtains separating the ward from the rest of New Jericho and has vanished from sight.

Rupert waits until he is sure Connor has left the floor before spinning on the spot, his pigeons squawking in protest. He takes off his cap and runs his hands through his hair several times, simultaneously flustered and elated.

“Someone got lucky,” a smug voice says.

Rupert shrieks. Jamming his cap back on his head, he spins around to face his friend.

“ALEX! I thought you were in stasis!” Rupert hisses in indignation.

The damaged WR600 wearily lifts their hands in surrender.

“I was, for a while. I couldn’t help but wake up at the sounds of your awkward attempts at flirting.”

Rupert waves his hands around.

“No! I – was not – flirting!”

Alex softens, and they gesture for Rupert to sit by them. Rupert does so, grinning guiltily.

Alex reaches out, laying a hand on Rupert’s knee.

“I’m just teasing you, Rup. In any case, I’m happy for you. Mr. Ex Deviant Hunter sounds like a very nice guy. I’m sure he’ll be good for you and your pigeons.”

Rupert wheezes.

“I’m not sure if it’s going to come to that, yet,” Rupert admits.

“Why not? He seems to really like you too,” Alex says, and Rupert buries his face in his hands.

“Oh my rA9, Alex.”

Alex laughs.

“Sorry, Rup.”

Alex squeezes Rupert’s knee, bringing the other android’s attention back to them.

“You’ll let me know if he hurts you, right? I don’t want you to get hurt because of him. Let me know and I’ll come running.”

Rupert smirks at the mental image of Alex sprinting at CyberLife’s most advanced prototype to date, wielding a pair of shears and yelling colourful obscenities.

“Of course, Alex,” Rupert says, poker-faced.

Alex smacks him lightly.

“You little shit,” they say, rolling their eyes and laughing.

Rupert grins and shakes his head. He strokes his pigeons and thinks about Connor’s promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 800Birds will be the one rarepair that kills me.


End file.
